Perspective: Season's readings: A gift guide

Here's how our holiday gift guide works: Look for the label that best describes the people on your holiday list and then match them with one of the suggested book titles. Or, if you find one of our characters describes you to a T, clip out the book suggestions and slip them to someone whose list you're on. There's nothing more fun than giving a book to someone during the holidays -- nothing, of course, except receiving one. Season's Readings to all.

Margo Hammond, Times Book Editor

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Reviews by Margo Hammond, Samantha Puckett, Gina Vivinetto and Terry Tomalin.

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The art crowd

For the art aficionado, a sturdy coffee table book on their favorite subject is usually a welcome gift. This year, some edgy art books grace the shelves in hopes of appearing in a holiday home.

Covering the New Yorker: Cutting-Edge Covers from a Literary Institution by Franciose Mouly (Abbeville Press, $50) celebrates the most provocative and timely covers from the legendary magazine, the New Yorker. Mouly, art editor for the New Yorker, also explores the controversies these covers have reflected, as well as those they have fueled. The book includes covers commemorating seasonal highlights and holidays and portfolios spotlighting the work of some of Mouly's favorite cover artists.

Dora Maar, Picasso's lover and muse, once said, "After Picasso, only God." After the end of their relationship in 1943, Maar lived a life of seclusion, and little is known of her. In Picasso's Weeping Woman: The Life and Art of Dora Maar (Bulfinch, $50), Mary Ann Caws sheds new light on Maar's (and Picasso's) life and work, including a fascinating photographic record of the creation of Picasso's Guernica.

Part art, part computer science, Robert Silvers' Photomosaic Portraits have been featured on the cover of Newsweek, Life and Playboy magazines. His third collection, Photomosaic Portraits (Viking Studio, $26.95), focuses on important historical and contemporary figures like Albert Einstein, Princess Diana, Tiger Woods and Claudia Schiffer. Each portrait is shown in its entirety and segments, so we can see what photographs he used; the sum of each mosaic's parts, as it were. Fashion designer and artist Michael Vollbracht, best known for his Bloomingdale's shopping bag, combines fascinating stories and illustrations of the rich and famous in Nothing Sacred: Cartoons and Comments (Rizzoli, $85).

One of the most widely collected artists of our time, Thomas Kinkade is the celebrated "Painter of Light." In Thomas Kinkade: Masterworks of Light (Bulfinch, $60) you'll find a generous collection of his works, including old favorites and new work that has never been seen in an art book.

A companion to the PBS series airing in Spring 2001, Sister Wendy's American Collection (HarperCollins, $40) is a selection of art from six American museums: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts (in Boston), The Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Kimbell Art Musium (in Fort Worth) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Sister Wendy has selected sculptures, paintings, furniture and costumes and addresses the style, meaning and historical context of each.

Music mavens

Anyone who loves a music geek has figured out we love to read about the stuff as much as we love to listen to it. So, what better gift this holiday season than a big, fat tome about tunes or books about the musicians who make the tunes?

Hot topics this season include jazz and the Beatles -- but, really, are either ever out of fashion?

Jazz: A History Of America's Music (Knopf, $65) by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns coincides with Burns' PBS documentary of America's premiere art form. The book features the stories of the extraordinary men and women such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker who brought jazz from small, black communities in New York and New Orleans into the public eye.

Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Lester Young, Art Tatum, all of our favorite artists are featured as well as a chronicle of the jazz movement throughout the 20th century and how the music affected culture, with emphasis on Fitzgerald's Jazz Age, big band swing's needed morale boost during the Great Depression and World War II, and jazz's place in the American counterculture. Jazz features more than 500 gorgeous photos.

Collected Works: A Journal Of Jazz 1954-2000 (St. Martin's Press, $40) is an anthology of writings by New Yorker jazz chronicler Whitney Balliet. From New Orleans and Dixieland jazz to bebop, the 1960s avant-garde and popular contemporary artists such as Wynton Marsalis, Balliet covers it all. Comprehensive, passionate and meaningful, Balliet's essays are accessible for both the jazz novice and aficionado.

Hear the musicians themselves in Living The Jazz Life: Conversations with Forty Musicians About Their Careers in Jazz (Oxford, $27.50) by W. Royal Stokes. Stokes has been covering jazz for 30 years in a number of publications. This book collects lively interviews with major artists -- Nat Adderly recalling how he and brother Cannonball were inspired by listening to the Baptist church band that played across from their childhood home -- as well as rising stars such as pianists Cyrus Chestnut and Diana Krall, and jazz patrons like comedian Bill Cosby and the late Steve Allen.

Get festive with the Fab Four this holiday by sharing The Beatles Anthology (Chronicle, $60). But, warning: at 6.4 pounds, this is no stocking stuffer. The story of the Beatles in their own words, the book features interviews from throughout the decades and fresh new stories, told in lively detail. Want to know about George Harrison's first encounter with lovemaking as a teen in Hamburg? It's in there. Plus lots of dish about the the prickly Let It Be sessions, the breakup, and Yoko.

Beatles In Rishikesh by photographer Paul Saltzman (Viking, $30) is a beautiful photo book of the band in India. The Beatles were one of the first Western pop groups to utilize the sitar (Norwegian Wood) and pal around with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, introducing Indian mysticism and culture to the world. Saltzman's book features 75 unpublished shots of the band.

Golden Agers

Forget the books on Overcoming Osteoporosis or Guides to Making Out a Will. Most golden agers these days want hip advice on the "art of staying creative, alive, and aware in midlife and beyond." So give them Secrets of Becoming a Late Bloomer by Connie Goldman and Richard Mahler (Hazelsen, $15). The authors present the testimony of a number of lively older folk, from Gray Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn to the late actor Jessica Tandy, who continued to blossom in their later life. And speaking of blossoming, why not talk about love, sex, and romance after 60? Zenith Henkin Gross does in Seasons of the Heart (New World Library, $14.95). Combining first-person accounts with facts and advice, Gross, a former AP journalist who is 75, interviewed more than 300 men and women for this anthology about older people experiencing love in all its forms, including Nelson Mandela (who re-married at age 80) and actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Lee (who have been married to each other for more than 50 years).

Roger Rosenblatt offers some witty but ultimately sound advice in Rules for Aging: Resist Normal Impulses, Live Longer, Attain Perfection (Harcourt, $18) for those who want to enjoy life. Rule 1 is especially important to remember: "It doesn't matter." Rosenblatt, a Times essayist and regular contributor to NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, says that "growing older is as much an art as it is a science, and it requires fewer things to do than not to do." Or as he puts it in Rule 42 which turns Socrates on his head: "The unexamined life lasts longer."

Judith Viorst admits, however, that "It's Harder to Be Frisky Over Sixty." That's the first poem included in Suddenly Sixty: And Other Shocks of Later Life (Simon & Schuster, $15), which follows her other "decade" books of verse (Forever Fifty and How Did I Get To Be Forty). Still Viorst is "standing firm against the Early Bird Special/I'm out on the dance floor strutting what's left of my stuff/I'd rather say never say die than enough is enough."

Photographer Chester Higgins calls it "The Nobility of Aging." In Elder Grace ($40), he offers portraits of 80 thriving African-American men and women who are experiencing aging with energy, wit and grace. "Their resolute faces," writes poet Maya Angelou in her poem in the book's foreword, "attest to the mountains climbed and the rivers forged."

Oprah fans

Okay, we know you never watch Oprah, but her Book Club Selections make superb choices for the literary-minded on your list. Her picks for 2000 were House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III, Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz, Open House by Elizabeth Berg, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, While I Was Gone by Sue Miller, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell, Daughter of Fortune by Isabelle Allende and Gap Creek by Robert Morgan.

The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard was the first Oprah pick in September, 1996 when the club started. That year Oprah also recommended Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison and The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton.

In 1997 the list included three books by Bill Cosby (The Meanest Thing to Say, The Treasure Hunt and The Best Way to Play) along with Ellen Foster and A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons, A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines, Songs In Ordinary Time by Marry McGarry Morris, The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou, The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds, Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi, and She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb.

In 1998 the Oprah-anointed included Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts, Midwives by Chris Bohjalian, What Crazy Looks Like on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage, I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb, Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat, Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen, Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman and Paradise by Toni Morrison.

In 1999 Oprah featured A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton, Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay, River, Cross My Heart by Breena Clarke, Tara Road by Maeve Binchy, Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes, White Oleander by Janet Fitch, The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve, The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, and Jewel by Bret Lott.

Daredevils

Just when you thought it was safe to venture outside again, a new crop of books has hit the shelves which will certainly prompt even the hardiest souls to forgo the journey this holiday season and snuggle up for a good read instead.

Many readers are familiar with Sir Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition and his subsequent 800-mile race for survival across polar waters in an open lifeboat. Alfred Lansing's book Endurance: The Greatest Adventure Story Ever Told (Carroll & Graf, $21.95) is still the definitive account of the epic struggle. A new trade paper edition, complemented by Frank Hurley's original photographs of the 1914 expedition, is due out in January.

Shackleton, however has a counterpart in the gnarly, frozen ice hero department. Valerian Albanov, a Russian seal hunter who endured mutiny, starvation, snow blindness and polar bear attacks in the Siberian Arctic two years before Shackleton's ill-fated voyage is an equally gripping tale of survival. In the Land of the White Death (Modern Library, $21.95), lost in a French library for more than half a century, has been translated into English for the first time and will certainly be regarded as a masterpiece of this genre.

The Mammoth Book of Endurance & Adventure (Carroll & Graf, $11.95) compiles the stories of some of history's greatest adventurers including Thor Heyerdahl of Kon Tiki fame, Sir Edmund Hillary on Everest, Robert Falcon-Scott on the South Pole and Beryl Markham's east-to-west flight across the Atlantic.

Storm (Adrenaline Books, $16.95), another compilation, features the work of many contemporary authors such as Sebastian Junger, Annie Proulx and Barry Lopez, among others, on everything from the 1996 killer storm on Everest to a trip around Cape Horn in a 30-foot boat.

Mountaineering enthusiasts will enjoy Daniel Duane's look at El Capitan: Historic Feats and Renegade Routes (Chronicle Books, $24.95). The 3,000-foot granite face that towers above California's Yosemite Valley has long been synonymous with vertical adventure. From Warren Harding's historic 45-day siege in 1958 to the five hour speed climbs of recent years, this is a must for every climber's library.

But life on the edge is more than just a thrill for some people; it is a job. Science at the Extreme: Scientists on the Cutting Edge of Discovery by Peter Lane Taylor (McGraw Hill, $29.95) will take you across suspension bridges to track raptors, down the mouth of a burning volcano and scuba diving into the core of crushing glaciers.

Gee, some folks have all the fun.

Armchair travelers

Armchair traveling can be almost as fun as the real thing -- but make you have a sturdy coffee table.

Jungles (Taschen, $39.95) with a multi-colored macaw flying across its cover, is this year's most exotic (and stunning) oversized volume. Photographer Frans Lanting takes us to the planet's tropical forests, from the Amazon Basin to Madagascar, Borneo, Hawaii, Australia and Costa Rica. Lanting purposefully uses the word jungle from the Sanksrit Jangala, meaning "impenetrable vegetation," rather than the more scientific term rain forest because "it leaves room for the imagination."

Those who are nostalgic for the Olympics might want to revisit the Land Down Under in Australia: Journey Through a Timeless Land by Roff Smith (National Geographic, $35). Or visit another continent in The Arctic by Hugh Brody (Sierra Club, $32). The Ultimate African Wildlife (Sierra Club, $50) offers starkly vivid photographs by Nigel Dennis of the amazing array of wildlife still found on the vast plains of Africa.

For trips closer to home there's Roadside America: The Automobile and the American Dream by Lucinda Lewis (Abrams, $49.50) with its 200 color photographs of America's car culture. Or better yet Take Me Out to the Ballpark: An Illustrated Tour of Baseball Parks Past and Present by Josh Levanthal (Workman, $29.98), by far the most unique travel book out this year. Shaped in a half circle like a stadium, the volume includes every major league park (including Tropicana) and famous minor and Negro league parks.

Key West Gardens and Their Stories by Janis Frawley-Holler (Pineapple Press, $19.95) gives a tour of the lush gardens in that southern paradise. Louisiana Faces (Louisiana State University Press, $39.95) is a tribute to the writers, artists and musicians of that state by New Orleans writer Jason Berry and photographer Philip Gould. Our Florida (Voyageur Press, $29.95) also combines images and good writing, including Carl Hiaasen and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas on the Everglads, Dave Barry on Disney World and Jose Yglesias on the Cuban cigar factories. Heart of a Nation: Writers and Photographers Inspired by the American Landscape (National Geographic, $40) also combines eloquent writing and heart-stopping images, featuring 16 writers and photographers. Barry Lopez provides the introduction.

Salon.Com's Wanderlust: Real-Life Tales of Adventure and Romance (Villard, $14.95) offers no images, just good travel writing. The collection, edited by Don George of Salon.com, includes several unpublished works and a foreword by Pico Iyer. Among the contributors are Isabel Allende, Tim Cahill, Carlos Fuentes and Peter Mayle. Bill Bryson edits the first volume of The Best of American Travel Writing (Houghton Mifflin, $13), an eclectic mix of pieces that stretch the definition of the genre, including Dave Eggers' Hitchhiker's Cuba and P.J. O'Rourke's Weird Karma.

Of course, some people actually insist on taking trips. Guidebooks for them abound, but here's one of the oddest around: The Spiritual Traveler: England, Scotland, Wales (Hidden Spring, $20), a guide to sacred sites and pilgrim routes in Britain. Or just give them On-line Travel by Ed Perkins (Microsoft, $19.95) and let them make their travel plans in cyberspace.

Classic kids

Classic children's stories never die. They just get told and retold.

L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz turned 100 this year, and Norton offered a classy centennial edition edited by Michael Patrick Hearn: The Annotated Wizard of Oz ($39.95). Hearn, the world's leading expert on the book and author, also introduces an oversized and condensed version of the original with sumptuous illustrations by Charles Santore (Random House, $21.95).

Another centennial edition out this year is The Little Prince (Harcourt, $18, paperback, $12). This time it is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the book's author, French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The new edition is translated by Richard Howard, but keeps those wistful drawings done by Saint-Exupery to accompany his story of the lonely little prince.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia books, including the beloved The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Harper Collins offers new collector's editions of the series. A single book is $7.95 or you can get the boxed set of seven for $55.65.

Other classics re-issued this year include Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (Tundra Books, $24.95), Petunia by Roger Duvoisin (Knopf, $15.95), The Little Fire Engine and other classics by Lois Lenski (Random House, $9.95-$13.95) and Bonjour, Babar, the six unabridged Babar classics by Jean de Brunhoff (Random House, $29.95).

Classic tales from African-American history are also being retold -- and repackaged into book form. Happily though, the oral tradition still infuses these projects. The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales told by Virginia Hamilton (Knopf, $24.95) includes a compact disc narrated by Hamilton and James Earl Jones. A CD is also included in In the Hollow of Your Hand: Slave Lullabies (Houghton Mifflin, $18). The songs are sung by Alice McGill while the text is illustrated with Michael Cummings' stunning quilt collages.

Martha wannabes Decorators

Martha Stewart wanna-bes will swoon over these coffee table books with decorating themes: Living in Style Without Losing Your Mind by Marco Pasanella (Simon & Schuster, $30) for sheer inspiration; A History of Interior Design by John Pile (Wiley, $65) for the serious design student; and Better Homes and Gardens Second Home for those who are dreaming of getting away to decorate. For the more practical, there's Calm Working Spaces by Lorrie Mack (HarperResources, $35); Textile Style by Carolin Clifton-Mogg (Little, Brown, $35), a guide to decorating with exotic fabrics, or more basic still, Window Style by Mary Fox Linton (Little, Brown, $29.95), a source for the latest in window treatments.

Foodies

Cooks worth their rock salt will want to add these cookbooks to their collections: the latest edition of the ever-popular Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker (Scribner, $31.50); The New Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen (Ten Speed, $19.95); Julia and Jacques Cooking At Home by Julia Child and Jacques Pepin (Knopf, $40) and, of course, The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook by Martha Stewart (Clarkson Potter, $31.50). But don't forget the lavishly illustrated The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, $29.95), in which Ina Garten, the owner of the tony East Hampton specialty store, shares her catering secrets. Martha wrote the foreword. All of these titles are on Book Sense's independent bookstores' bestseller list.

For a real assault on a food lover's senses and soul though, choose Italy Anywhere: Living an Italian Culinary Life Wherever You Call Home by Lori DeMori (Viking, $29.95). The author celebrates the Italian cuisine as a way of life and an expression of passion. She includes a list of "simple delicacies . . . things there is no excuse not to eat," including "new olive oil on toasted bread rubbed with garlic and sprinkled with salt," "a warm tomato fresh from a summer garden;" and "anything at all eaten under a shady tree."

Still stumped? Pair up Caviar by Susie Boeckmann and Natalie Rebeiz-Nielsen (Wiley, $40), complete with a recipe for spahettini with caviar and Champagne sauce, with a paperback copy of The Cake Mix Doctor by Anne Byrn (Workman, $14.95). The former will look great on a coffee table; the latter helps cooks turn mixes into masterpieces. Or better still, combine The Stanley Complete Step-by-Step Revised Book of Home Repair and Improvement, introduced by PBS Hometime host Dean Johnson (Simon & Schuster, $35) with Hugh Johnson's handy Pocket Encyclopedia of Wine 2001 (Simon & Schuster, $13.95). Oh, and be sure to wrap it all up in paper you made yourself.

White House watchers

Books on the American presidency out this year are as numerous as vote recounts and hanging chads.

The Smithsonian's Museum of American History offers The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden as a companion to its exhibit of the same name, which opened Nov. 15 (Smithsonian Institution Press, $24.95). The American President (Riverhead, $25) is the companion volume to the 10-hour PBS series on the subject, narrated by White House correspondent Hugh Sidey. Organized thematically rather than chronologically, the highly illustrated book offers interesting juxtapositions: Ronald Reagan and Thomas Jefferson; Jimmy Carter and John Adams; Bill Clinton and James Madison. The Reader's Companion to the American Presidency, edited by Alan Brinkley and Davis Dyer (Houghton Mifflin, $40) culls 41 essays by prominent historians examining the highest office in the land.

The White House was a major book topic this year, not because we were wondering who would take up residency there, but because the house turned 200 in November. Hillary Rodham Clinton graces the cover of An Invitation to the White House: At Home With History (Simon & Schuster, $35), an oversized volume which offers a unique inside tour by the first lady of the public and private celebrations that took place in the historic house. Clinton has donated her proceeds to the White House Historical Association. A portion of the publisher's profits will be donated to the National Park Foundation. Clinton also provides the foreword to The White House: Its Historic Furnishings & First Families (Abbeville, $60), a richly illustrated survey of the furnishings acquired by the presidents and their families. For an inside look into the private lives of all the U.S. presidents, there's America's First Families by Carl Sferrazza Anthony (Limited edition hardcover, $30; paperback, $18).

Time magazine Washington correspondent Bonnie Angelo gets even more personal with First Mothers: The Women Who Shaped the Presidents (Morrow, $27), analyzing Presidential Oedipal complexes from Washington (he and his mother didn't get along) to Clinton (he adored his mom).

The first volume in the Presidential Library Series offered by Public Affairs is John F. Kennedy: The Presidential Portfolio which culls more than 250 photographs and documents from the Kennedy Library in Boston. In The Clinton Years photographer Robert McNeely chronicles the past eight years, offering hundreds of candid black and white photographs in a coffee table format. On Page 106 in the left-hand corner, as part of a double-page spread showing Clinton interacting with children, is a photograph of the president on Nov. 3, 1996, with William Clinton White, a Tampa resident named for the president.

Dog and cat people

Dog Days (Morrow, $10) is a sweet collection of hilarious dog shots, highlighted by quotes from puppy lovers. Prince and Other Dogs 1850-1940, compiled by Libby Hall (Bloomsbury, $12.95), offers antique photographs of man's best friend.

If you give Amazing Gracie: A Dog's Tale, by Dan Dye and Mark Beckloff (Workman, $18.95), be sure to wrap it in tissues. Tears well up just reading the cover. Gracie was the deaf, partially blind albino Great Dane whose finicky tastes inspired her owners to create Three Dog Bakery, a successful chain that specializes in fresh-baked, all-natural, home-cooked treats for dogs.

Buster's Diaries: The True Story of a Dog and His Man, as told to Roy Hattersley (Warner, $15.95) is the irreverent life story of why Buster became an English cultural icon. While walking his man through St. James' park in 1996, the dog was forced to defend himself against a goose that, quite unfortunately, belonged to the Queen. In The Truth About Dogs (Viking, $24.95), author Stephen Budiansky maintains that dogs are much more complex than we ever thought, and that their behavior is rooted in evolutionary strategies for survival.

And here's something new: Dog Works: The Meaning and Magic of Canine Constructions, by Vicki Mathison (Ten Speed Press, $16.95), explores the significance of the way dogs move and arrange things with full-color photos and accompanying text.

Cats outnumber dogs by 8 million in the U.S., and apparently they all need therapy. In Cats on the Counter: Therapy and Training for Your Cat (St. Martin's, $21.95), Dr. Larry Lachman and Frank Mickadeit apply human therapy techniques to kitties. They deal with common cat problems like furniture-clawing, fussy eating and fighting, and explore why some folks are attracted cats specifically, and others are downright repelled by them. Carole C. Wilbourn, "The Cat Therapist" who writes the Cats on the Couch column for Cat Fancy magazine, offers The Total Cat: Understanding Your Cat's Physical and Emotional Behavior from Kitten to Old Age (Quill, $14), covering everything from preparing for life with a cat to traveling with a kitty companion.

The Kingdom of the Cat by Roni Jay (Firefly, $24.95), another all-about-cats book, is particularly beautiful. With stunning photographs and easy-to-read text this coffee table book with a soft cover provides all the basic information on breeds, mythology and biology of the enigmatic feline. The Mythology of Cats: Feline Legend and the Lore Through the Ages, by Gerald and Loretta Hausman (Berkley, $12.95) follows the path of felines throughout world history, examining the quirks specific to each major breed.

For the literary cat lover, try Doris Lessing's Particularly Cats (Burford, $14.95), now in paperback. The London writer's tells how cats have affected her life. Letters from Cleo and Tyrone: A Feline Perspective on Love, Life and Litter, by L. Virginia Browne and Linda Hamner, illustrated by Steve Feldman (St. Martin's, $15.95), is a collection of e-mails between two cats who met during a brief pet-sitting stint. Griffin and Sabine meets Tom and Jerry.

Funnybones

The big news in comics this year was the death of Charles Schulz on Feb. 14 (his last Peanuts strip appeared the next day). A Charlie Brown Christmas: The Making of a Tradition offers reminiscences by the director and executive producer of the popular TV Christmas special, now in its 35th consecutive year, based on the strip. Peanuts 2000 (Ballantine, $11.95) features the last year of strips starring Charlie Brown & company. The University Press of Mississippi offers Charles M. Schulz: Conversations, edited by M. Thomas Inge.

For those who find Peanuts too sentimental, there's always Duke 2000: Whatever It Takes, a Doonesbury Book (Andrews MacMeel, $14.95) by Garry Trudeau. Duke ran for president this year on a platform of "compassionate fascism."

Parodies were big this year. Two even had the same title: Who Cut the Cheese? Both were spoofs of Who Moved My Cheese, a popular business book about dealing with change in the workplace. Stilton Jarlsberg's satirical take on the bestseller bills itself as "An A-Mazing Parody About Change and How We Can Get Our Hands on Yours" (Three Rivers Press, $12.95). Mason Brown's version (Simon & Schuster, $15) is "about resisting change by placing the blame on those around you." And back by popular demand (or so says publisher Pocket Books) is yet another spoof on the Chicken Soup for the Soul onslaught: Chicken Poop for the Soul II: More Droppings by David Fisher ($11.95).

For a slightly more uptown approach to humor, there's The New Yorker Book of Literary Cartoons ($29.95) or The New Yorker Book of Technology Cartoons ($24.95). Both are edited by Robert Mankoff and published by Pocket Books.

The new Humor & Wit series by Modern Library offers paperback collections, ranging in price from $10.95-$15.95, of well-known humorists, including Nora Ephron's Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women (her rumination on breasts is hilarious); Mark Twain's Library of Humor; Ben Franklin's Wit and Wisdom from Poor Richard's Almanack and Most of the Most of S.J. Perelman. As Comedian Steve Martin, the series editor, says in his introduction to the enterprise, "Comedy writers . . . are more in demand than ever, partially due to their high suicide rate."

The Second City (Sourcebooks, $45) takes us backstage at "the world's greatest comedy theater," where comedians John Belushi, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Mike Meyers and John Candy got their start (Hey, a lot of them are dead). The volume comes with 2 audio CDs with "rare and never-before-heard comedy."

Mirth of a Nation, edited by Michael J. Rosen (HarperPerennial, $15), promises "140 shots from the loose canon of American Humor" and delivers Fran Lebowitz (on the richness of money), Gary Trudeau (on re-translating Madonna) and John Updike (on cross-dressing with J. Edgar Hoover).

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